Yankees Go Up Against History in Quest to Repeat

Thomas Boswell, The Washington Post

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 6, 1999

As the 1999 baseball season opens, many assume that the outcome of this year is a forgone conclusion. The New York Yankees, who won more games -- 125 -- in a year than any team in history, will surely repeat.

That's ridiculous. The Yanks will be very good. That doesn't mean they'll be great again. Baseball history is adamant: Last year can't help you now.

In 1954, the Cleveland Indians won 111 games and had an even better regular-season winning percentage than the '98 Yankees. In team strengths and style, those Indians strongly resemble the current Yanks.

The Tribe had perhaps the greatest pitching staff in history. Three Hall of Famers -- Early Wynn, Bob Lemon and Bob Feller -- were joined in the rotation by Mike (Big Bear) Garcia (19-8) and Art Houtteman (15-7). The bullpen duo of Don Mossi and Ray Narleski had an ERA of 2.08. Why, as a mop-up man, Cleveland had another Hall of Famer, Hal Newhouser!

The next season Wynn, Lemon, Garcia and Houtteman all had fine seasons. Mossi and Narleski were excellent. No big injuries. Feller retired, but he was replaced by rookie Herb Score, who led the league in strikeouts, won 16 games and was the most dominant power pitcher in the league.

If anything, the Indians should have been even better in '55 with Score aboard, just as the '99 Yankees look as if they've improved by trading David Wells (18-4) for five-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens.

What happened to Cleveland in '55? The Tribe won 18 fewer games and didn't even reach the World Series, much less win it. Yes, they were still very good, but, somehow, greatness had disappeared. How could it happen?

Season after season, baseball is a sport in which half the games are decided by one or two runs. No matter how good or bad the team, it's locked up in a tense battle about half the time. When the margin between victory and defeat is so thin, countless factors come into play: team confidence and chemistry, bench strength and the timing of injuries. Great teams, such as the '54 Indians and '98 Yankees, don't suddenly become lousy clubs. But they can easily fall back dramatically for what seem like relatively minor reasons.

If the Yankees "only" win 96-or-so games, who can compete with them? In an age of mighty hitters when many teams have a genuine Murderers' Row, the key to pennant races is starting pitching.

In April, watch the boxscores to see whose rotation gets off to the best start. Pitchers are notorious for being spectacular one season, then awful the next. Hitters are consistent over their careers, starting pitchers an infuriating mystery.

In recent years, baseball has so regularly surpassed expectations that it's almost an insult to the sport to try to circumscribe it with our guesses. Perhaps this is the year that Ken Griffey Jr. will hit 71 home runs -- on his way to 800 in his career. Or maybe we will see our first undefeated 20-game winner. Why not? We've seen Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, David Cone and John Smoltz put up marks such as 19-2, 18-2, 20-3 and 17-3. Why can't somebody go 21-0?